“I don’t even know where to begin,” said Chris.
“Try the beginning.”
“All right. Are you sure you want to hear this, Magenta?”
“More than you could possibly know.”
Chris walked over to his desk and picked up a file that was lying open. He scooped up a few more pieces of paper that were strewn about the desktop and placed them neatly in the file. He seemed to study the file for several seconds before extending it towards Magenta and gesturing for her to take it.
“You are my wife Magenta. You were Cassandra Allen, single mother to daughter Amelia,
and loving daughter to your mother Ellen.”
“How is that even possible?” Magenta said, incredulous.
“The miracle of medical science. Cassandra Allen had a rare heart condition that caused her death. Neither she nor anyone in her family knew it existed. She died suddenly and painlessly while cooking dinner for her daughter one night.”
“Oh, my God,” said Magenta as she drew a hand to her face. “What happened next?”
“When her body...”
“My Body.”
He cleared his throat, “When your body came into the morgue it was flagged as a viable candidate for a venture that I was an investor in, but not as of yet a client.”
“What venture? What is it called?”
Chris took in a deep breath, let it out and, no longer able to look her in the eye, said, “ReaniMate.”
“What the fuck is Reanimate?” Magenta felt that Cassandra was helping her, giving her the strength to persevere in the face of the complete unknown.
“ReaniMate is a company run by a doctor named James Burch. ReaniMate uses the bodies of deceased individuals, provides them with a new robotic heart, and places them in cryogenic storage until a suitable client purchases them as a mate.”
“Excuse me? Are you in some way insinuating that you bought me from this ReaniMate? That’s impossible! Christopher, we have been married for ten years. How can you say this? Being with you has been a dream come true. You are all I ever wanted in life. Tell me this isn’t true!”
“Besides the Robot-Tech heart which goes into every vessel, there is a Memory Unit that is inserted into the brain. It acts as a memory wipe, and then through technology I don’t even understand myself, new memories can be created and uploaded to the Memory Unit. When the Memory Unit and the Robot-Tech heart are activated and synced, the vessel is activated and reanimated. In essence, they wake up a new person.”
“And you did this to Cassandra?”
“Baby, she was dead already. Her death had nothing to do with me, us, or anything. I was lonely. I was tired of being alone. I wanted a companion. Someone to love. And I do love you! Completely.”
“But I don’t even know you, do I? Really? According to you, you wiped Cassandra’s memories and implanted new ones. Here’s a question, do I even have a sister named Elena?”
“No.”
“Did we even meet at Eliot Bay in Seattle?”
“No.”
“Have we even been on any of the trips I remember?”
“No.”
“I remember our being married for ten years! Ten wonderful years, Christopher. Are we even married, really married? After all, am I even considered a human being?
“No. You are by law considered a Cybernetic Organism, a Cyborg.”
“And have I been your faithful loving ‘mate’ for ten years, Christopher?”
“No.”
“How long have I actually been your property, Christopher?”
“Six months.”
“Oh, my God,” she said again. “I can’t believe this!”
“Magenta, I understand, this is an unbelievable amount of information to absorb. We can get through this. You need to believe what I said. I love you!”
“How can you love a toy you bought at the store Chris? Do you even know what love is?”
“Yes I do!”
“Bullshit! Love is what Cassandra Allen had for her daughter. Love is what she felt for her mother. Love is the pain they both feel from the gaping hole in their lives since she died. And you, Chris, you and this Doctor Burch disgrace their love for her by bastardizing her body with scripted, empty memories of a love that was never fostered. Was never organic. Was never true. No, you have no idea what love is.”
Chris returned to the chair behind his desk and sat down. He leaned back in the chair and proceeded to rub his temples. For a half-second he thought he might reboot but he knew he was human and that wouldn’t happen. Right?
Neither he nor Magenta spoke for nearly ten minutes. Both were deep in thought, wondering how to proceed after this conversation of devastating revelations. Chris thought there had to be a way to bring this around. He did love her. At least he thought he did. No, he did. It didn’t matter she’d only been there six months.
Did she have a point? Yes. She didn’t really love him. She just remembered she did because he’d told her as much from his interface. What was he going to do? He just couldn’t go back to being alone. Or even worse, dating. Having to constantly decide what the women actually liked, him or his money.
“Chris.”
He was jerked form his internal dialogue and answered, “Yes, Magenta.”
“I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything!”
“I want you to shut me down.”
“No. Magenta, please.”
“Before you do it though, I want you to make a sizable donation to benefit Amelia Allen. You do good research. If she doesn’t have anything set you can take care of it. Do you understand?”
“Magenta–”
“Haven’t you done enough? You have now participated in the destruction of two lives that resided in the same body!”
“I just wanted to love and be loved in return.”
“Love is organic, Chris. You don’t get to buy love. You especially don’t get to take someone else’s love and make it your own. You don’t deserve it.”
Chris nodded and slowly walked across the room and took her hands in his. “I don’t want you to go,” he said.
“She deserved to live. Cassandra deserved to live, Chris. Every breath I take here and now is a breath stolen from her, regardless of how it was done. Chris, I’m saying goodbye. I understand why you did it. I also understand that you didn’t mean any harm. But if Cassandra doesn’t get to live this life, then no-one should. Especially me. Now please, kiss me one last time and shut me down.”
He leaned in and placed a final kiss on her beautiful lips and said he would do as she asked. He had known all along what the shut-down protocol was, so there had been no need to discuss it. This hurt exponentially more than he expected it to. Who was she to say he didn’t deserve to be loved?
No, now was not the time for an internal psychological debate. He would honor her request. He placed his thumbs on her cheeks and slid his finger over to that pressure point right behind the earlobes. He told her goodbye one final time, but she didn’t answer. She merely closed her eyes, and as a thin stream of tears escaped her eyes, Magenta was no more.
XI
Chris Martin’s hands were shaking as he went through the termination sequence. He thought he could actually hear a whirring noise come to a stop. But that couldn’t have been the case. He stood and looked down at her and noticed her mouth and eyes were both open. The eyes were still and unmoving. It would take a while for him to come to grips with his final day with Magenta.
Maybe she was right. Maybe the actions he took to bring her into his life were wrong. Maybe his choices did disgrace the memory of Cassandra Allen. He held her hand briefly, placed it back on her chest with the other, and left the room. He closed the door behind him, walked down the hall to the living room, and stood at the grand window.
He put his hands into his pockets, and for the longest time watched the city in its paces and wondered if he deserved to live.
~*~
~*~
/> The End
of this Omnibus of
Tales from the Canyons of the Damned
~*~
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About the Authors
A.K. Meek A mild-mannered management engineer by day, a mild-mannered writer by night, Anthony writes speculative, slipstream science fiction and fantasy. He has penned alternate realities where robots are treated as gods fallen to earth, built cities filled to the brim with artificial animals, and crafted stories of alien invaders that can see human thought. He has also dipped his hand in “Jericho” style post-apocalyptic fiction and birthed a fantastic world where truth and lie can occupy the same space. He lives in the Deep South, among the mosquitoes and magnolias, with his wonderful wife and menagerie of dogs and cats, and a wild rabbit that occasionally strays into the back yard for a visit.
Visit A.K. Meek’s main website for updates
Will Swardstrom is a speculative fiction author. His latest novel is Blink, the first adventure in The Utility Company series, co-written with his brother Paul. He also has two full length novels, Dead Sleep and Dead Sight, and is at work on the finale in the trilogy. He also has three stories in The Future Chronicles anthology series (Uncle Allen in The Alien Chronicles, Z Ball in The Z Chronicles, and The Control in The Immortality Chronicles). Each of those anthologies has charted in the Top 5 on the SF Anthology list and The Alien Chronicles reached as high as #6 on the Overall Top 100 List. The Control from The Immortality Chronicles has been nominated for Best American Science Fiction. He also has a few stories set in Hugh Howey’s WOOL Universe among his various other short stories and novellas. He lives in Southern Illinois with his wife and two kids.
Visit Will’s main website for updates
Bob Williams lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Sara and daughter Kate. When Bob isn’t writing he works for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Nashville. Bob hopes you enjoy reading his words as much as he loves writing them.
Visit Bob’s main website for updates
Ernie Howard was born on January 29,1977 during a Minnesota blizzard. His two story telling parents almost didn't make it to the hospital in their beat up blue Cadillac. Ernie is the writer of Write Something!, a book about the illusion of Writers Block. A World Without, a Science Fiction book about the love between a husband and wife, and the darkness that can come into a marriage. Walter, A Science Fiction book about a boy who is an outcast who makes a friend with a man that speaks to him through his television. All of these books are available on Kindle. Ernie lives with his wife and 3 boys in Henderson, NV, where he dreams up new stories, and tries to live everyday to the fullest.
Visit Ernie’s main website for updates
Jason Anspach writes old movies. Together with his wife and their six children, Jason resides in a hundred year old Craftsman home in a blue collar city nestled in the Pacific Northwest. The house is very drafty, but a family that large has a way of keeping you warm.
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S. Elliot Brandis is an engineer and author from Brisbane, Australia. He writes post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction, often infused with a variety of outside elements. He is a lover of beer, baseball, and science fiction.
His novels are about outlaws, outcasts, and outsiders.
Visit S. Elliot Brandis’ main website for updates
Hank Garner Hank Garner is the author of Bloom, Mulligan, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and Writer’s Block. For nearly two years, Hank has hosted The Author Stories Podcast, a weekly show focusing on writing and the creative process.
Hank lives in Mississippi with his wife and five children.
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Jon Frater is a librarian at MCNY. He writes science fiction and fantasy in his spare time and is preparing to release Book 1 of his new Expocalypse Weird series.
He lives in New York with his wife and children.
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Daniel Arthur Smith is the author of the international bestsellers Hugh Howey Lives, The Cathari Treasure, The Somali Deception, and a few other novels and short stories.
He was raised in Michigan and graduated from Western Michigan University where he studied philosophy, with focus on cognitive science, meta-physics, and comparative religion. He began his career as a bartender, barista, poetry house proprietor, teacher, and then became a technologist and futurist for the Fortune 100 across the Americas and Europe.
Daniel has traveled to over 300 cities in 22 countries, residing in Los Angeles, Kalamazoo, Prague, Crete, and now writes in Manhattan where he lives with his wife and young sons.
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Contents
SANDHOGS
THE PENTHOUSE
THE HARBOR
TESLA
THE BLUE ORB
SMOKE
NATURAL BORN ALIEN
FLOAT
LEDGE TOWN
THE TOMBS
BLOOM
THE HEREAFTER
EYE IN THE SKY
SOLE SURVIVOR
THOUGHTS AS WATER
RAZOR
THE PARK
MAGENTA
About the Authors
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Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: Omnibus Page 18